Are we paying attention yet?

Sometimes I like to hit the snooze button on my alarm in the morning, bargaining for a few extra minutes of sleep. I know I’m not the only one guilty of this habit. Unfortunately, the snoozing, according to scientists, can hinder how we start our day. You’re not really getting extra sleep time, it’s just taking longer to wake up and get the day started.

Pope Francis has been trying to wake us up. Through his actions and his words he is prompting us to live the joy of the Gospel, to respond to the most vulnerable in our midst, to live a life modeled after Christ. But are we paying attention and adjusting our steps accordingly.

“I am counting on you ‘to wake up the world,’” the pope wrote to consecrated men and women in his letter announcing the Year of Consecrated Life. He urged them, during his meeting with superiors general and men’s religious orders, “Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, acting, living! (Show) it’s possible to live differently in this world.”

While he addressed his letter to consecrated men and women, we too can heed his expectations. “Radical evangelical living is not only for religious: it is demanded of everyone,” he said. He adds, “In scanning the horizons of your lives and the present moment, be watchful and alert.”

Given our day-to-day obligations and the countless distractions in our lives, our alertness level to what really matters may be at risk. Not only has modern technology facilitated an overload of information, our own personal interests and short attention spans keep us spinning sometimes in too many directions. “Cada loco con su tema.” This Spanish dicho points to how each person has his own interest. You can see this on the social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram. Most sites are keeping track of what’s trending, and hashtags allow us to search for posts about a specific topic.

God has blessed us with an abundance of options, it is up to each of us to be attentive and selective. We need to pause periodically, wake up from our routine to take an inventory of what gets our attention versus what needs our focus. Are we paying attention to what Pope Francis is saying, to what the Gospels are calling us? Are we taking action or opting instead to hit the snooze button?

I fear we live in a world with walking zombies. Bishop Daniel E. Flores has written and talked about the poverty of indifference and individualism, “a culture that neither hears the cry of the poor, nor sees their suffering. He said, “at the bottom of indifference is an attitude that says: If it does not affect me, I don’t really care.”

In July our communications team took some time to set our goals and objectives for the year. The process helped us examine if our efforts were focused accordingly in carrying out our ministry. I think it is helpful to do this on a personal level as well. I find writing poetry helps me slow down and reflect. My father’s illness also jolted me to a more alert state. I had to tame my workaholic tendencies and focus on my father. I kept reminding myself, “Todo tiene su tiempo. (Ecclesiastes 3)”  

If we are always operating on triage mode, moving from one project to the next, we might find ourselves not pausing at times long enough to pray or pay attention to the people in our lives, or to even take note and give thanks for God’s graces.

The Church in her wisdom gives us the liturgical season and the different feast days to help us refocus our attention throughout the year. Also, Mass and our faith devotions work in the same way, just as Pope Francis’ does with his homilies, his pastoral visits to different countries and his encyclicals. His most recent encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si: On Care of Our Common Home,” released June 18, asks us to consider if we are paying attention to our shared home and if we are doing our part to care for the gift God has given us.

The world is spinning in many directions. It behooves us to wake up, pay attention, and take action when it comes to our faith lives as well as to what is happening in the public square. We need to raise our voices to ensure we respond to the needs in our communities near and far and to maintain religious freedom in our country. Pope Francis wants us to make noise, to evangelize the Good News. We can’t do that if we keep hitting the snooze button.

(Originally published in August 2015 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)